The Celebration of Mount Olive’s 70th Anniversary
“Grateful Hearts, Minds and Hands”
January to October, 2023

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VISION: A celebration of Mount Olive’s 70th Anniversary promoting activities for the congregation and the community, in thankfulness to God’s work through us.

OBJECTIVE: To promote actions pooling together members of Mount Olive to receive God’s good gifts, to praise and honor His name and to invite our neighbours to join us in this celebration from January to September 2023.

ASSESSING SELF AND WORLD (CONTEXT):
Mount Olive is connected to the Christian Church of all times, and it is also planted in the North area of the city in our time. Here we have our blessings, our joys and our challenges. We are related to our neighbourhood with its specific opportunities and needs. We can serve them motivated by Christ’s love overwhelmingly poured upon our History and work.
             We live in a world whose circumstances seem to indicate lower search for Christian Churches, or Christian spirituality. Numbers of attendance and offerings may sometimes discourage us in the work of the Kingdom and of the Congregation. In these times though, when difficulties abound, we are reminded that there is no demand so big that would exhaust God’s resources for our lives. This way we boldly take on the commission of continuing to proclaim the Word and tend to the World, bringing the Gospel of Hope and the Service of Peace that is core to our Christian faith, life and teaching.

DISCERNING THEOLOGICAL WISDOM (Theological Foundation):
While the entire Scripture could be invoked as the foundation of our work as a Christian Church, we believe that the Apostle’s Creed frames the specific design of our 70th Anniversary Project.

The Apostle’s CREED
The Apostle’s Creed provides a sound Theological Framework for our Celebration, in connection with “heart, Mind and Hands”.
           MIND - The Third article teaches us that by the proclamation of the Word we are drawn by the Holy Spirit to the presence through faith implanted in our hearts.
           HEART – In the Second Article, faith in our hearts leads us to believe and learn about Jesus’ work on the cross for us and all mankind. Touched by His grace, forgiveness and love, not only our hearts believe, our minds learn and grow, but also our hands are moved towards our neighbour.
          HANDS - In the First Article, we behold God’s creation, especially mankind, and learn He has placed it in our steward hands. It brings us back to the Third Article, where the Holy Spirit sends us in faith to a life where we serve God and our neighbour – faith active in love.

EXPECTED RESULTS

_Growth in knowledge and faith among the members of Mount Olive;
_The fulfillment of specific activities to celebrate the 70 years of Mount Olive;
_Engagement of many members of Mount Olive in the project;
_Enhancement of the visibility of Mount Olive before our neighbourhood and the city at large.

Stay tuned for the upcoming events at Mount Olive this year and join us in celebrating 70 years of God's work among and through us!

Scheduled events

* February 18th, Saturday, 2:00pm - The Bach Organ Concert – with Rev. Paulo Brum

* March 26th, Sunday – Special Service. Guest Preacher: Rev. Terry Defoe

* April 22nd, Saturday  – Mission Fest

* May 28th, Sunday – Special Service. Guest Preacher: Rev. Irwin Pudrycki

* July 16th Sunday – Special Service. Guest Preacher: Rev. Daryl Solie

* September 24th, Sunday – Special Service. Guest Preacher: Rev. Michael Schutz

* September 29th - Culture in the Kitchen, Germany meets Brazil

* October 15th, Sunday 4:00PM -  The 70th Anniversary Special Service / Catering Dinner to follow

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January, 2023

We have officially launched the celebration of our 70th Anniversary. It has been 70 years of uninterrupted blessings from the Lord!

The first event was the dedication of the Olive Tree Mural, on Sunday, January 8th. It will be with us in the Narthex throughout the year sharing the acts of Love that God does through us in our city. The 70th Anniversary Committee read a text to explain the project which you can find below.

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The OLIVE TREE MURAL
"Dear Mount Olive family: today we are launching a joyful process: we want to count our blessings and celebrate them. God led his people 70 years ago to take the bold step of starting St John’s Mission, in 1952, which eventually became Mount Olive on the date of its foundation, March 9th, 1953. From that day on, day after day, week after week, God’s blessings never ceased to pour over our work. They come in different ways: Word, Sacraments, fellowship, activities, outreach, involvement with the community and much more. And with the blessings come the opportunities: sharing God’s blessings with our neighbour, having our faith into action through love.
To mark the beginning of our celebrations today, we wanted to dedicate our Tree Mural. Perhaps you have already noticed that it is in our Narthex. The 70th anniversary Committee thought of having a visible place where we share all the good things God is doing through us in our community. It is a tree, an Olive Tree, that hopefully will have many leaves. The idea is simple: “leaves” of paper will be available to all throughout the year. You all are invited to take one of them and fill it out with one action that is being done by someone you know from our congregation. It can be yourself, it can be somebody else. For example: “So and so does volunteer work at….” Or: “So and so helps their neighbourhood by…” Then you leave it in the basket on the table at the back of the sanctuary, and one of us will put it up on the Tree. Hopefully by next December we will have dozens of leaves showing our faith in love for our neighbour!
The idea is also that, even though many things are done by Mount Olive during a year, it doesn’t need to be that only institutional actions count. We are all Mount Olive, we are all Christians. As we put our faith into action we are sharing God’s love as Mount Olive, as Lutherans, as Christians. But maybe you’ll say that you don’t like to “toot your own horn” or somebody else’s. That’s fine, you don’t need to put names. Just mention what is being done and that will be great!
This simple, small action is designed to show God’s love for us, giving His Son to do the Greatest Work of all – obtaining forgiveness of sins and applying it to us by faith. Now as Christians, we live in the world showing our faith in acts of love. By the way it is always good to remember: even though faith saves alone, faith is Never alone. It always comes with fruits of love. Let’s share some of them with our congregation and whoever comes to visit us?
The leaves will be available starting next week. If you have any questions or suggestions, please talk to us, we will be happy to help. Thank you!"